Election Day May Go Away

Plan Lengthens Schedule, Creates `Voting Centers'

December 1, 2004|By Beth Kassab, Sentinel Staff Writer

Florida's election supervisors are proposing one way to make voting easier: Do away with Election Day.

Voters would cast ballots during a span of several days or weeks ending on the traditional voting day, under a plan endorsed Tuesday by supervisors at their meeting in Orlando. The group will now lobby lawmakers for changes during the spring legislative session.

The overwhelming response to this year's 15 days of early voting -- when an estimated 2.3 million people cast ballots statewide before Election Day -- convinced most supervisors that voters are now demanding new freedom to show up at the time and place of their own choice.

The change would dramatically reform the way the state runs its elections, effectively creating a more streamlined system needing fewer poll workers, precincts and equipment.

Voters would no longer be required to report to assigned precincts, even on Election Day. Instead, people would be able to select from a number of large "voting centers" in their county.

"It's a leap in the way we think about things," Pasco County Supervisor Kurt Browning said. "It would be the logical next step."

Though the proposal is still in its infancy with few details hammered out, the group of Florida's 67 county supervisors modeled their proposal after one Colorado county's election setup.

Larimer County, Colo., did away with traditional precincts this year and replaced them with "vote centers." Instead of having 190 polling places, officials created 31 vote centers throughout the county.

The cost of bringing the plan to Florida is unknown, Browning said, but it could cut expenses just as supervisors are scrambling to find money to meet new federal and state requirements to improve access for disabled voters and to upgrade voting equipment.

The change would do away with a lot of election headaches, supervisors say, because it would, by some estimates, cut in half the number of polling places.

Orange County Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles said he could replace his 252 precincts with about 80 voting stations where voters from all parts of the county could go to cast ballots.

Fewer polling places would reduce the number of voting machines and would require fewer poll workers, which could cut salary and training costs. It also would reduce the chances of human error and electronic glitches, supervisors said.

"If you reduce the number of precincts then you reduce the number of mistakes, and that just makes sense," incoming Volusia County Supervisor Ann McFall said.

Before this year's enormous popularity of early voting, when some voters waited in lines as long as five hours, some supervisors were reluctant to alter the long-standing system amid concerns that voters would not respond well to any changes.

"Those fears have been allayed," said Browning, chairman of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections' legislative committee.

One of the only concerns from the group came from those who did not know whether their counties had large enough facilities to host the voting centers for as many as 15 consecutive days.

Early-voting sites this year were limited to county supervisor offices and public libraries, which were too small to handle the crowds.

And, while this year each supervisor had the leeway to choose how many early-voting sites to offer and what hours they would be open, the proposal would likely call for uniform days and hours statewide.

That brought some resistance from supervisors who did not want to open voting centers on Sundays as many did this year.

"I would like not to vote on Sunday," said Karen Krauss, supervisor in Sumter County. "At some point the voters have to take responsibility for getting their behinds over to the polling places."

Others expressed concern that the Legislature would not approve the plan.

"Our association has not been particularly effective, particularly in the House of Representatives, to get the Legislature to go along with our proposals," said Ion Sancho, supervisor in Leon County.

Regardless, the group said it would not be satisfied without at least some changes, pledging to at least demand larger voting centers during early voting.

"One day of 12 hours of voting is ridiculous," said Penny Halyburton, supervisor in St. Johns County. "We're beyond that."